


where we go for each other, we go together

by city_of_suns



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Rise of Kyoshi - Fandom, Shadow of Kyoshi - Fandom
Genre: Does this count as hurt comfort?, F/F, Fluff, Gen, I would do ANYTHING for this family, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, just a quick little one shot, not much else but i hope it's cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26250835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/city_of_suns/pseuds/city_of_suns
Summary: In which Koko grows up idealizing one mother and being raised by the other.
Relationships: Koko & Kyoshi, Koko & Rangi, Kyoshi/Rangi (Avatar)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 133





	where we go for each other, we go together

**Author's Note:**

> it's very stylized...i swear i didn't mean to make it so dramatic
> 
> this story is based on headcanons by @maviplier on tumblr!! please go check out their art it makes me [(heartbreak emoji)(pleading eyes emoji)(circling hearts emoji)] and is honestly why i'm posting this story. you can find the art this is based off [here!](https://maviplier.tumblr.com/post/627905824498614272/i-love-daddy-rangi-sm-please-spare-us-more-papa)

Rangi could never say it was hard to love Kyoshi and Koko, because loving them was as easy as breathing, as easy as the gentle thrum of fire that rushed through her blood when she opened curtains to greet the morning sun, as easy as it was to fit herself into Kyoshi’s arms. But, spirits, it was hard to  _ care _ for them. From the moment Kyoshi lifted a rag doll of a girl off the floor of a dirty alley, Rangi had promised to do everything in her power to make sure she would never see Koko anything but well-fed, smiling, and clean.

The latter happened to be hard to maintain.

It’s hard to see Koko underneath the obscenely thick layer of dirt that covers her as she sits in the bathtub, but Rangi manages to make her feel small underneath her disapproving glare anyway. Rangi scrubs underneath Koko’s fingernails, trying to keep the muttering under her breath to a smaller amount than what she’d heard from her own mother back when she was a girl. Rangi supposed Koko could blame her grandmother for the headache-inducing (according to Kyoshi, although she’d nevers say it) barrage of comments that Rangi could release while taking care of those she loved. 

“How did you manage to get this dirty in the first place?”

“I was trying to earthbend,” Koko says. “You know, like Mama. Except I kept falling!”

Rangi sighs, but she can’t fight the smile that emerges at her daughter’s little pout. Yes, she’ll be a formidable earthbender one day. But today, she’s a little girl.

“How about,” Rangi says, “you ask Mama to help you? I’m sure she’d love to help.”

“But Mama’s not here right now,” Koko says. “I want to bend now!”

“Okay,” Rangi says, because there’s a little earthbender stubbornness in her voice that reminds Rangi of Kyoshi and the pang of missing her when she’s off doing duties. “Okay. How about I try and help, then? Would you like that, little firecracker?”

Koko practically glows underneath the layers of dirt.

“Yeah!”

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

“Papa, look at what Mama taught me!” Koko draws her hands in a circle in the air as she moves between stances to raise a semicircle of earth around her in a barricade. The move looks suspiciously like a firebending stance.

“Wonderful, Koko! Make sure to keep your center low!”

She feels more than she hears Kyoshi walk up behind her and Rangi readily realaxes into Kyoshi’s body as she’s pulled into it.

“Hello, my love,” Kyoshi says into her ear. “Doing well?”

Their daughter has somehow bent her own foot into the earth and is struggling to get it out.

“Now that you’re here, yes.”

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

“Are you sure you don’t want help with the Dai Li?”

“I think it’s going pretty well, actually.”

“I’m always amazed at the lengths you’ll go to avoid political maneuvering,” Rangi says. “But I trust you.”

Kyoshi will regret the Dai Li until the day her consciousness fades from the Spirit World.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Sometimes, when Rangi misses Kyoshi, it’s hard to look at Koko. They share the same green eyes, the same skin tone and rough hands, a little crooked smile usually reserved for Rangi herself. It’s not that Koko makes her miss Kyoshi.

It’s not hard to believe that Koko is Kyoshi’s daughter.

Rangi gets Koko ready for her first day of school by putting her hair into a topknot, putting in the haripiece  _ she _ used when she was younger, wincing as her mother pulled on her hair. Unlike Rangi, though, Koko’s not some Fire Nation girl with a sensitive scalp. She gets her hair pulled on the playground pretty much daily.

“It’s not how Mama does it, though,” Koko says.

“I know,” Rangi says. “But this is how I wore my hair when I was younger. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Not really,”

“Oh. Okay,” Rangi says. “I’m sorry.”

“Papa?”

“Yes?”

“I miss Mama.”

“I know, Koko. I miss her too. But I miss her a little less when I look at you.”

“Really? Why?”

“It’s like little bits of her are imbued in you,” Rangi says, and her daughter looks enthralled by the prospect. Much more quietly, though, Rangi says, “so much so that there’s no space left for a trace of me.”

When Koko’s teacher is introduced to Rangi, her brow furrows for a moment before lighting with recognition.

The Avatar’s wife. Koko's mother.

A million years ago, Rangi could not even have dreamed of it.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

When they first brought Koko home, it was a struggle to get her to eat.

Kyoshi says it was like that with her, too.

Koko struggles to understand that Rangi would cut herself to pieces to feed her child. That Kyoshi would murder a thousand men in cold blood to keep food on the table. Koko hides food underneath her bed for emergencies, smuggles food and spare change in napkins, does what she can to survive because she’s never been somewhere where she can just  _ live _ . 

Rangi discovers this because her hairpiece goes missing and she finds it underneath her daughter’s bed, tucked carefully into a shirt that’s definitely Kyoshi’s.

“Our daughter is not a thief, what’s ours is hers,” Kyoshi says when she finds Rangi crying over the hairpiece and makes her explain.

“That’s not what’s wrong,” Rangi rasps out. Kyoshi softens.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“What for?” Rangi says.

Kyoshi presses a kiss into her forehead.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Koko wears the hairpiece when visiting her grandmother at Kyoshi’s behest.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Rangi cannot raise Koko and follow Kyoshi. This has been a reality for years. This has been a hard-fought battle, harder than any she has fought beside her wife. It is not harder, however, than the battles that her daughter puts her through.

Koko is fifteen.

Rangi remembers being fifteen. Being full of fire and mirth and lust and ire and  _ want _ .

Rangi wants to be next to her wife. Rangi wants to hold her child. Rangi wants to see her mother, to watch the machinations of the Fire Court, to travel across the Earth Kingdom again, to feel the cool kiss and the hard slap of wind at the Poles. 

Rangi stays in Yokoya while Koko is in school and tries to teach her about the world that both her mothers used to traverse together. Kyoshi brings back newer stories, lovely anecdotes, easier, quiet, loving days than Rangi’s militaristic upbringing.

“Why do I have to listen to you? What do you know about earthbending anyway?”

“Enough to teach your mother what she needed to know,” is Rangi’s response. She’s been leading Koko through forms for nearly eight years now, Kyoshi for even longer. She doesn’t appreciate the sparks in her daughter’s voice.

“Yeah, but Mama’s the Avatar,” Koko rebukes. “You’re just some firebender.”

“And you’re just some earthbender,” Rangi snaps back. 

They both stare at each other, worlds of hurt echoing on their faces.

_ “When you two fight, _ ” Kyoshi says,  _ “it’s like two worlds crashing into each other.” _

When they fight, it’s like a daughter fights with a mother.

For the first time in eight years, Koko walks away from stance training voluntarily and Rangi feels her root break. Kyoshi is not here to be her center.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Rangi argues with her teenage daughter and thinks,  _ is this what I was meant to do? Is this my legacy? _

Kyoshi comes home for the summer and tells Koko about a celestial event, so they pack a picnic and go to Yun’s grave. Sometimes, all together, the sting hurts a little less to see someone young dead because they were so misguided and unable to cope with lack of love. Koko’s closer to Yun’s age than Rangi, now, and the thought is disconcerting but pushed from her mind as they unpack the picnic. Kyoshi’s brought stalk nose mushrooms, and Rangi’s finally figured out how to boil noodles, something Koko and Kyoshi mercilessly tease her for.

The box of fire flakes (which are too spicy for Rangi, thank you very much) manage to be devoured by Koko as stars start shooting across the sky. She can see them reflected in her daughter’s eyes, her wife’s, but it’s hard to imagine them within her own. 

“Make a wish,” Rangi whispers into Kyoshi’s ear. She smiles and passes it on to Koko.

“Make a wish,” Kyoshi tells Koko.

The stars reflect in Rangi’s eyes.

Kyoshi kisses her, and Koko pulls a face.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Koko is sixteen when Kyoshi finishes setting up the Dai Li and comes back home. Rangi goes to visit her mother.

Indefinitely. 

Rangi feels the cold kiss and slap of wind at the poles, she travels across the Earth Kingdom, she watches the machinations of the Fire Court, and along the way she orders Kyoshi’s favorite meals. With every shop she walks into, she thinks about buying a gift for Koko. She sees knicknacks she wants to put on the mantle above the hearth.

When Rangi reaches her mother, she collapses into her familiar embrace and realizes it’s been so long since she’s been  _ held _ . She cries, and she cries, and she wants to stand next to her wife. She wants to hold her child.

“I know, my love,” Hei-Ran says. “I know.”

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

“How could you leave?”

Rangi looks her wife square in the eyes.

“Were you there to know?”

Koko overhears and thinks her mother says,  _ “Were you there to keep me here?” _ and thinks,  _ I am something to be escaped. _

When the Avatar’s child runs away, it is news all across the world.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Rangi mends Kyoshi’s clothes after she’s torn them after an unnecessarily harsh training session. Kyoshi holds Rangi a little tighter. They’ll be okay; they will fight a little stronger; follow each other a little longer, remember what it’s like to feel pain together. They’ve lost their path for a little while, and the ache in Rangi’s chest is palpable but it’s nothing compared to the crushing rock of weight that sits in her gut when Kyoshi is able to hold her but not her daughter. Their north towards the future is gone.

Koko feels the cold kiss and slap of winds at the poles, she travels across the Earth Kingdom, goes to visit her grandmother and sees the machinations of the Fire Court. She wants to be held, but thinks of  _ so much so that there’s not space left for me _ and wonders how her mother could love someone like her. Could make space for someone like her.

“Remember how I didn’t even leave my mother a note?”

Kyoshi presses a sob torn from her throat in the shape of a laugh into Rangi’s shoulder and nods. There’s a hollow in Rangi’s stomach.

“You’re so alike,” Kyoshi says. “Designed to give me a heart attack.”

“That’s not fair! She gets some of this from you, too.”

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Jinpa is the one to find Koko starved, grimacing in pain, and covered in  _ so much dirt _ . Rangi spends a night fruitlessly cleaning the house from top to bottom, covered with her daughter’s tracks as it is. When Kyoshi comes back from the hospital with her daughter, she takes the broom from Rangi’s hands and leads her to bed.

For the first time in years, Koko joins them.

With two earthbenders in the house, everything is sparkling clean by the next morning right in time for stance training.

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

“Next time you run away,” Rangi tells her daughter of iron will and fire spirit, “take me with you.”

Koko laughs.

“Okay, Papa. Wouldn’t want you getting bored.”

“I’m serious.” She reaches out a hand to rest on Koko’s cheek, thumb brushing her cheekbone. “Where you go, I go. Even if it’s just in your heart. Okay?”

Koko rests her forehead against her mother’s.

“Okay.”

They both smile.

“And,” Koko adds, “for the record, you were always with me when I ran away.”

“You want to know a secret, little firecracker? It was like that with me, too.”

//||\\\//||\\\//||\\\

Rangi looks around at Kyoshi training Koko and another girl to use fans in this house in their little corner of Yokoya. She sees young women learning to empower themselves, to fight for each other and strive towards becoming their best, even when others underestimate or push them down. Rangi looks at her daughter, who, with help from both of her parents, has grown up to become as beautiful and headstrong and passionate as any union between Kyoshi and Rangi could have produced and thinks,  _ “this is my legacy. This is what I was meant to do,”  _ and as Rangi watches their daughter perform stances that Kyoshi and Jinpa before her mastered, she knows that Kyoshi feels the same.

**Author's Note:**

> make sure to leave comments or kudos if you enjoyed :)  
> come sob over the ladies of the ATLAverse i'm @herglowinggirl on tumblr! also a little sidenote: the ending absolutely implies that the original kyoshi warriors were just girls kyoshi and rangi adopted off the street and several of them were queer/trans. eventually they become a safe haven for sapphics and within the southern earth kingdom "is she....you know....a kyoshi warrior" becomes a euphemism is "yo does she like girls"


End file.
